Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be as smart and intelligent as humans by 2029, claims Google’s engineering head

Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering, and an author who describes himself as a futurist said that by 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence at the the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas. Photo Source:- LinkedIn

Director of Google’s Engineering Department, Ray Kurzweil has said the artificial intelligence (AI) singularity will take place in the year 2029, and just a few years later human beings will merge with machines. Artificial Intelligence drives the human’s future, and human beings may take a position of the backseat. However, Ray Kurzweil is a prominent futurist, who has made a name for himself through his predictions. Since the 1990s, Kurzweil has made a total of 147 predictions and he has a success rate of 86%.

During an interview on March 13th at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, Kurzweil predicted that “the singularity”- which is basically the moment when carbon and silicon-based intelligence will exceed human’s natural intellectual capacity and will create a runaway effect- is not very far away (will occur in the next 12 years).

Ray Kurzweil said this singularity would create a relation with cybernetic society including humans with computers in their brains and machines smarter than their creators. He claims this is already happening with the new technology, especially with our addiction to our smartphones. Today, in our engaged daily-day life, different types of technology are played a role as mate, we always behave with them like our close friends to improve the quality of physical and mental life. Ray Kurzweil believes that the moment is a little over a decade away and the artificial Intelligence will lead to the end of the human race.

The singularity is that point in time when all the advances in technology, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI), will lead to machines that are smarter than human beings. Photo Courtesy:- Minds

Mr Kurzweil said: “By 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence.” He added that the process has already begun.

The Google employee said: “That leads to computers having human intelligence, our putting them inside our brains, connecting them to the cloud, expanding who we are.

“Today, that’s not just a future scenario. “It’s here, in part, and it’s going to accelerate.”

Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, who recently acquired ARM Holdings with plans of bringing the Singularity to us within the next 30 years. Masayoshi Son explained in a press conference last October: “I think a big paradigm shift is coming. The biggest theme in my view is the Singularity. I think it is coming into reality in the next 30 years. For that vision, I am exercising that strategy. $100 billion is an interesting size of ammunition. In my view, that is the beginning. My passion is bigger than many people think”.

Speaking at an address to the Oxford University Union, Professor Stephen Hawking warned that man-made viruses and malicious artificial intelligence (Technology) needs to be controlled in order to prevent it from destroying the human race. Professor Hawking said, “Since civilisation began, aggression has been useful in as much as it has definite survival advantages. It is hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution.”

“Now, however, technology has advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war. We need to control this inherited instinct by our logic and reason.” He suggests that “some form of world government” could be ideal for the job, but would itself create more problems.

Stephen Hawking has warned that technology needs to be controlled in order to prevent it from destroying the human race. Photo Courtesy:- Getty Images

Then we have people like Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, Professor Stephen Hawking or even Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, worried about artificial intelligence and the future of the human race – but Kurzweil isn’t worried. Mr Kurzweil continued by stating that predictions that artificial intelligence (AI) will enslave humans is “not realistic”, adding that it is already ubiquitous. He added: “That’s not realistic. We don’t have one or two AIs in the world. Today we have billions.”

Kurzweil said that machines are already “powering all of us”, in the sense that they are making us smarter, that machines are already upgrading and enhancing the human brains. Kurzweil has also suggested that people will connect their brains directly with computers, by connecting chips to the neocortex (the part of the brain where we do our thinking) in our brains, as a result, become funnier, better at music and sexier, too.

“By 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence,” Kurzweil said in an interview with SXSW. Photo Courtesy:- (Gene Driskell)

This will us to “expand our minds” and “exemplify these artistic qualities that we value,” according to Kurzweil. “They’re making us smarter,” Kurzweil said during the SXSW interview. “They may not yet be inside our bodies, but, by the 2030s, we will connect our neocortex, the part of our brain where we do our thinking, to the cloud… We’re going to be funnier, we’re going to be better at music. We’re going to be sexier. We’re really going to exemplify all the things that we value in humans to a greater degree.”

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, who has previously warned that humans are in danger, artificial intelligence could make human beings irrelevant, unless humans choose to merge with machines. Elon Musk is working with OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research company, that is focused on making AI friendly to humanity.

“Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,” he said, suggesting that people could merge with machines in the future, in order to keep up.

Kurzweil’s words echoed Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk’s sentiments, that humans need to converge with machines, pointing out the work already being done in Parkinson’s patients (disease). That’s how we are becoming a neighbour of cybernetic society. And Mr Kurzweil predicts that during the 2030s some technology will be invented that can go inside your brain and help your memory, because it’s the nature of technology.

“Ultimately, it will affect everything,” Kurzweil said during the 2017 SXSW interview. “We’re going to be able to meet the physical needs of all humans. We’re going to expand our minds and exemplify these artistic qualities that we value.”